I use both Paint Shop Pro X and Photoshop CS5. I'm more proficient with Photo Shop since I took an online course for it years ago and have just upgraded to newer versions through the years. I did start with Photoshop 7 years ago, but didn't use it very much just because I found Paint Shop more user friendly. I upgraded to PSCS5 and have started to use it more and really am finding it pretty easy, especially if I'm patient and take the time to do a tutorial or two to learn what I want to do instead of trying to go through menu items to see if I can find something that will do what I want it to do.

I still use my old reliable Photoshop 7, but I've been playing around with Gimp a little lately. It's a free program that you can download at http://www.gimp.org if you want to try it out. I'm pretty geeky and I personally find it fairly user friendly, but I think I'm still going to stick with good ole Photoshop.

There is another program - Paint.net - but it only works on Windows os since it runs on the .net platform. Its free and from what I can remember, fairly easy to use. I know a lot of digital scrapbookers use to use it back when I first got into this crazy hobby.

Several years ago, I bought Scrapbook Factory Deluxe 5.0, and that's what I've stuck to. The one thing I needed from it is the ability to flip the layout to PDF, which it does easily at 300dpi. It's pretty much idiot proof, although it's a memory pig. The only thing is that I have to screenshot it if I want a JPEG or similar format.

For fudging with images and being able to utilize alphas that are one-pagers in kits, Paint does it for me, mostly because I'm a cheapass. I have an old version of PS (Photoshop CS) which I'm sure would suit my purposes but I'm scared of it, because I need the nonexistent time to watch tutorials and play with it.

There was a thread posted on here with a link to get Photoshop CS2 for free - fully licensed legitimate copy of the software. If I can find it I'll post a link to it, but in the meantime, you might want to see if you can find it on the Adobe site. Its a link somewhere on their site, so you know that its legit.

Hey Beverly, here is the link to the free PhotoShop ... I'm thinking about downloading it. I've been using Gimp and that's working well, so I'm not sure if I want to download PhotoShop too. Our internet is super slow so it would take a while!

This is an old version of PhotoShop, but lots of people around the web were saying it worked fine and had nearly as much to offer as the current version. So, worth a shot if you want it!

I use cs3 and illustrator, I also have psp7 and ArtRage4. If you want to try some free programs that are also great and fairly simple there is
Twisted Brush Open Studio 17.24. A great painting program that you can use to make hand painted items and much more. It is completely free this version although there are some paid for versions that have more to them if you come to love the free one. Link
Also Artweaver is another painting program that is powerful and free, the paintbrushes offer the similar kind as Painter (Corel). If nothing else with these programs it offers an oportunity for making painted papers elements and textures that you can them import into your photoshop or elements etc., There is truly a fabulous range of free software out there that you can use to design with without having to pay a penny for your software.I have used them all and still do for different projects.Artrage used to have a free version, but seem to have done away with it in favor of a limited use demo of Artrage4. It is worth the money, it does everything you could want from a painting program and you have the ability to use vector tools.